Stupid Store Employees / Inconsiderate Stores

[Doug Kanter]

Hey! You stop injecting facts into this discussion RIGHT THIS MINUTE! :-)

[Stephen Moore]

Those recycled bags must cost .0001 each. If she manages to talk

10,000 customers out of them, and the are 10 checkers working at any one time, well, let's see the store saves......

I've always wondered if this is because the schools have stopped teaching the story problems I had as a kid (50's and 60's)?. We were taught to think or at least the effort was made. The ones that go. If Sally had 3 quarts of ice cream and wanted to give Nancy 1/3 and save the rest for Billy, how many planets would completely rotate around the sun by the time most kids today would figure it out?

An interesting interview question I read about once was "if a room is

9x12 with an 8 foot ceiling, how many pennies could be stacked in that room?" The interviewer's purpose was not testing the applicant for the answer, rather he wanted the applicant to explain to him how he would calculate the answer, ie, his thinking process. More of this needs to be taught and re-inforced in the government schools today, but we all know that's not going to happen. If the answer is not A, B, C, or none of the above, they're lost.

_______________________________________________________________________ SteveM

[Stephen Moore]

Or, maybe you were on Candid Camera and didn't know it. One episode they had a bagger follow the customer out to their car and ask for the bags back as they were running out. _______________________________________________________________________ SteveM

[enigma]

Maren Purves wrote in news:cqcnp6$5s0$ [e-mail]:

DOH! that's true. i was thinking northern US. i'm pretty sure points south need our 'off-season' items (although having shopped in FL in February, i *was* wondering just how many of those down jackets actually sold... )

got any active volcanoes? my 4 year old is presevating on volcanoes currently. lee

[willshak]

On 12/23/2004 9:09 AM US(ET), enigma took fingers to keys, and typed the =

following:

Those thin-blooded people in Florida wear down jackets when the temp=20 dips below 70=BA

--=20 Bill

[Doug Kanter]

My favorite was one where they placed traffic lights at the intersection of two narrow sidewalks in Central Park. When the light turned red, pedestrians stopped and waited. And waited. And waited. Like sheep. :-) And this was 30 years ago, before people generally expected to see others on rollerblades & bikes in a place like that. Just pedestrians.

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

I have a recollection that 100 is, by definition, the average IQ....but that doesn't match up with my Webster's New Collegiate's definition of IQ. Can anybody cite some source that explains the number?

[Noozer]

If you know that this is a fact you SHOULD make the public aware.

Any restaurant that does stuff like this should be driven out of business.

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

Long, long ago and far, far away I was sitting on a bench in a tropical commercial area - wearing a long-sleeve sweater and freezing my butt off because the temp was down 65 degrees in December. A guy just off the plane from Montana sits down beside me; apparently feels the need to make conversation; and says "Sure is hot and muggy...".

[William Brown]

Did you spell it out for them?

[Raymond J. Johnson Jr.]

No, half the population is below the *median*, including you, apparently. (It's theoretically possible for say, 75% to be below average.)

[Raymond J. Johnson Jr.]

Don't forget, there are stupid customers too, and LOTS of them. I used to work in a TV and appliance store, and people were continually coming to the store in subcompact cars and acting surprised when there was no way to get a 32" TV in them without taking them out of the box. My favorite was a guy who insisted on trying to put a big box with a TV in it into the back door of a small car. You could see from a block away that it wouldn't fit (of course the guy was too cheap to have it delivered). I was trying to help him, and finally I said, "Look--this isn't going to fit. You can either take it out of the box or find another way to get it home." "But I want to keep the box," he whined. I told him we could flatten the box, and he could just tape it back together when he wanted to use it. He finally relented and we took the TV out of the box and put it the back seat. I asked him if he wanted me to flatten the box for him, and he said no, he'd do it. As I was going back to the store I turned and sure enough, he was trying to fit the empty box, intact, into the car. I couldn't resist. I walked back and said "Sir, the box doesn't get smaller when you take the TV out of it." "Well," he said, "I just wanted to see if it would fit."

[Stephen Moore]

Don't take it too personally Jeff. Be glad you don't live next door to her, or worse, married to her.

_______________________________________________________________________ SteveM

[Doug Miller]

Given a normal distribution of a particular characteristic over a large enough population, the median, the mean, and the mode will be the same. Yes, it's theoretically possible for 75% to be below average, but only if (a) the distribution of the characteristic being measured is not normal, or (b) the population is fairly small. Neither of those conditions pertains here.

[Jeff Wisnia]

Naw, you misunderstood me Steve. I just figured that given the part of the world it was posted from, maybe things had a propensity for becoming inverted and reversed.

How did you adevine that Fran is a she? The best damn nanny we had when the kids were small was named Fran. He was a guy named Francis, and very much a man.

Back to the thread now:

I am very pissed at the inconsideration of store employees who lock the entrance door several minutes before the closing time posted on that door. That sometimes happens just as I'm striding toward it, having probably driven a bit too recklessly through exasperating traffic conditions for the past twenty minutes to get there, and exhaling a sigh of relief thinking that I'd "made it" in time to buy that one thing I desparately needed.

Pointing at my (accurate) watch and gesturing is fruitless, I'm know I'm not gonna get what I came for.

Yeah, I understand they want to finish their work and get home, so why not post a closing time 15 minutes earlier and then keep the doors unlocked 5 minutes past that time so people like me don't feel they're being shat on?

My uncle Schlomo would have kept his shop open till the next day if customers were still heading toward the door. Course it was *his* store and that's what makes the difference. Just try telling a store employee that the people he's "working for" are really the customers, not the store's managers. Chances are he/she won't understand what you're saying.

A close second for the annoyance award are the shopkeepers who are too lazy or dumb to take down the "OPEN" signs in their windows when they close up. You don't find out the place is closed until after you've hunted around for five minutes to finally find a parking space a block away, then then hoof it over to the locked store in a pouring rainstorm. Arrgh!

Happy HGolidays all!

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

I've got a better one:

Major electric utility in an eastern city, located sort of on the fringes of "Center City".

A fair number of more-or-less-not-to-be-expected closing-type holidays for a company of that size/position.

On any one of those days in the winter, you can look out your window (some of us worked on those days) and watch a steady trickle of elderly people - mostly women - disembark from taxicabs to pay their bills in cash as they have been doing for the last fifty years or so.

Distance from the curb to the entrance must be at least 100 feet. *Nothing* on the outside of the building to tell them it's closed....just a little 3" high sign on the glass inside the door - that can't be read until somebody practically has their nose to the glass. No outdoor phone, few cabs...they're just left standing on this windswept corner in the winter.

Wrote up a company suggestion on it....rejected.

[Stormin Mormon]

And trying to pry his naked wife off the tub?

[Stormin Mormon]

You must be a conservative. WEll spoken, friend.

[Stormin Mormon]

Put the store manager's home number on your cell phone. dial it, and hand it to the elderly person. Repeat as necessary.

[George E. Cawthon]

Don't have a clue what Webster's New Collegiate says, but

100 is in the middle of the Average. You have to remember there is a range called average not just a single number. And no, half of the people are not below average intelligence. Half of the people are below 100 on the IQ scale. Average intelligence is considered one standard deviation on either side of 100, and that means 66-2/3 percent of the population is of average intelligence.